Island-based PeaceTrees Vietnam marks a decade of growth.

Forty years ago, Chuck Meadows was a man at war, a Marine Corps commander leading a rifle company through the jungles of Vietnam.

Today his tours of Vietnam are of the friendship-building and diplomacy variety, as executive director of the PeaceTrees Vietnam, a Bainbridge-based nonprofit.

One of the most heartening differences between the Vietnam then and the Vietnam now, 30 years after the fall of Saigon?

“The people are smiling,” said Meadows, 66, who joined PeaceTrees Vietnam six years ago, initially as the agency’s first veterans’ liaison.

“It’s one of the things I really notice,” he said. “The people are happy, friendly and welcoming. There is no animosity, certainly not to veterans.”

Since the end of the war 30 years ago, Meadows has made more than 20 trips back to Vietnam, more than a dozen of them leading friendship-building visits that have included Vietnam veterans and the families of fallen soldiers.

PeaceTrees Vietnam works to “heal the wounds of war” through land mine removal and education, building schools, housing and libraries for the poor in Quang Tri Province. The group plants trees and takes civilians and veterans on diplomacy trips through the countryside.

The participants make the trip for various reasons.

Some come looking for closure and healing, others come to honor their comrades, to make amends, to repair the damage of war and to spread good will where hatred was once sown.

Last month Meadows returned from a trip with 25 people, 15 of them high school students from Danville, Calif.

There was a special person along too – the sister of a soldier in his unit who died in the war.

Sue Warner-Bean of Seattle was only 8 when her older brother David was killed in Hue, Vietnam. She was doing research on the Internet when she found that Meadows, her late brother’s commander, was leading humanitarian efforts through PeaceTrees Vietnam.

The pair developed a friendship, and Meadows met with her and her parents. When she was ready, Warner-Bean signed up for the diplomacy tour.

She wanted to plant trees in her brother’s honor, and asked Meadows to take her to the spot her brother was killed.

“He was killed 17 February, 1968,” Meadows said. “I was his company commander, and as you might guess it was a very emotional and overwhelmingly meaningful trip that we made together.”

The location of the battle remained fresh in Meadow’s mind — he lost 20 of his 160 men there. Those who survived were awarded 190 Purple Hearts for bravery, with several soldiers receiving two or three.

“David was a hero amongst many young heroes we had there,” said Meadows, who completed two tours in Vietnam, the second of which involved commanding troops at the Tet Offensive.

Meadows retired from the Marine Corps in 1987, after 26 years active duty. Although he went on to enjoy a successful business career in finance and project development after the war, his sense of connection to Vietnam never left him.

“Vietnam is what shaped me as a young man,” he said, which is why he was drawn through the doors of PeaceTrees Vietnam six years ago, after reading about the organization in the newspaper. He joined the board of directors and was leading the organization within a year.

Meadows and his wife Missy relocated to Bainbridge Island from Virgina in 1999, with plans to eventually retire on land they bought in 1971. But his desire to be of service in Vietnam has put retirement on hold.

“Chuck is an inspiration,” said islander Jerilyn Brusseau, who founded PeaceTrees Vietnam 10 years ago with her late husband Danaan Perry. “I have great respect and deep appreciation for the model of service that Chuck Meadows brings to the humanitarian work in Vietnam, where he is building relations with the Vietnamese and with veterans and their families.

“Chuck’s leadership has deepened and strengthened our work.”

Clearing fields

Brusseau was the mother of three young children in 1969 when she received the news that her brother Daniel, an Army helicopter pilot, had been killed in Vietnam.

She knew in that moment that she would one day take steps to do peace work there, and PeaceTrees resulted from that desire. Brusseau’s mother Rae Cheney, also of Bainbridge Island, is one of the agency’s most devoted volunteers.

PeaceTrees was the first U.S. organization granted permission by Vietnam to do land mine removal, said Meadows, noting that the organization to date has sponsored the clearance of over 170 acres of land, removed more than 3,000 unexploded ordnance items, and planted more than 15,000 trees on cleared land.

On the former U.S. Marine Corps base Dong Ha in the Quang Tri Province, PeaceTrees has erected Friendship Village, which how has 100 family homes, a kindergarten and library. By the time the project is finished, there will be 600 homes there.

Among the agency’s most important work is preventing death and injuries from land mines, which litter the landscape of Vietnam and make it difficult to farm the land.

PeaceTrees has provided land mine awareness training to more than 12,000 children in Quang Tri Province through the Danaan Parry Landmine Education Center. The agency also sponsors a medical assistance fund for land mine accident victims.

PeaceTrees celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. In the past decade, several other Bainbridge Island people associated with PeaceTrees went on to found nonprofits dealing with various aspects of the land mine epidemic abroad, namely Children First and Clear Path International.

Today, more people in Vietnam know about Bainbridge Island than perhaps the other way around, Meadows said, thanks to the island’s support for humanitarian work there.

Along with ensuring the health and safety of the Vietnamese people, PeaceTrees seeks to build relationships between people, Meadows said.

“Once I fought in Vietnam. Now, at this time in my life, I want to move on and in a small way help heal the lasting damage to Vietnam, its land, and its people, and the relationship of our two countries,” Meadows says.

“We plant trees, and that’s a good way of bringing people together. We get down in the dirt, and get our fingernails dirty together.”

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Seeds of change

PeaceTrees Vietnam is located at 284 Madrona Way in Winslow. For more information about the nonprofit organization’s work, visit the website at www.peacetreesvietnam.org.